BARONE: George Romney was running seven years after the Houston ministers speech and after John Kennedy had been generally considered to be, A, a successful and popular president, and, B, one whose religion played no part whatsoever in his public decision making. MCCLAY: I dont blame him for feeling that way. (Laughter.). Thats what Joe Kennedy brought up against Mitt Romney in Massachusetts in 94, attacking a church doctrine which, by then, had been repudiated 16 years earlier. Complete access to articles on ChristianityToday.com, Over 120 years of magazine archives plus full access to all of CTs online archives. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Im not convinced that in my subject religion and secularism and the relationship between them in American history that Im necessarily setting out some model thats going to be universally applicable. The first of these is a fairly minimal, even negative, understanding of secularism in the same way that Isaiah Berlin talks about negative liberty. Both embrace the absence of religious establishment. There are three major sub-kinds ranging from conservative, progressive, and pioneering ethics. ALLEN: Why shouldnt he feel that way? CLAIRE BRINBERG, CNN: My question picks up along these lines that Romney is in a different position from JFK. Theres definitely an effort to capitalize-Throughout the book, there are religious allusions he used as ways of thinking about the subject, but also as ways of appealing to people whose sensibilities were shaped by Christian tropes and metaphors. The first one is that in the American experience, the separation of church and state, which by and large we acknowledge as a rough-and-ready principle, does not necessarily mean the separation of religion from public life. I do think the rise of fundamentalism itself is a relatively recent phenomenon in the American sense. For people who care, if I can plug a friend, Shaun Casey at the Wesley Theological Seminary is completing a book on Catholicism and the 1960 campaign. Habermas saw [the prospect of human cloning] as an assault on the fundamental dignity of the human person, and he was interested in engaging Ratzinger to see what resources there might be in the Christian intellectual tradition to make sense of these impending phenomena. Its definitely coming through that person. That kind of social polarization worries me. At least atheists are people who have made a decision; theyve taken the question seriously. For a long time, the theological melody of the past has lingered on, but [it] might not forever. This is part of being an incarnational theology, that somehow the divine will is working, not only through the inspiration, but through the agent that puts the inspiration down on paper. This young senator just going there-it was an act of boldness; like when he went and spoke to the Texas delegation in the 1960 convention. Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World, One-in-six Americans have taken steps to see less of someone on social media due to religious content, Support for legal abortion is widespread in many countries, especially in Europe, Freedom of speech and LGBT rights: Americans views of issues in Supreme Court case, How people in 24 countries view same-sex marriage, In 2020, properties in 102 countries and territories were targeted in incidents tied to religion, A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married, Why Muslims are the worlds fastest-growing religious group, Asian Americans Hold Mixed Views Around Affirmative Action, Gun Violence Widely Viewed as a Major and Growing National Problem, Hospital emergency rooms see boom in patients around the Fourth of July. It may be this is a test case of the ability of the bicameral arrangement to work. In thinking not so much about the books, but the debates that are held all over the country, the fascinating thing about those, and forgive me to those of you who were sitting with me at lunch since I already said this, is that these are almost always being sponsored by Christian organizations. CROMARTIE: But there was prayer in the schools. It insists that pluralism, rightly understood-pluralism having to do with the corporate liberty of groups-is a necessary concomitant of liberalism because we are social creatures, because our social existence is a prior condition of everything else that we value. CROMARTIE: Dan Harris, are you the one that gave us the ABC news report that Mike Allen just cited? Socially and culturally speaking, the country has evolved in a similar way, not intentionally but with similar effect. And perhaps I should add-and I did this for my Turkish audiences; it utterly baffled them, but it shouldnt be quite so baffling for you-that all this makes sense in light of the fact of [a] third proposition: that American institutions and culture are intrinsically and irreducibly complex-not chaotic, which is of course what they see-but complex. Sometimes they clash with one another, but the American culture has found room for both to be present. There are those [in Turkey] who want to see more religion in public life; they thought the American way was admirable in that extent. MCCLAY: No, no. That suggests Kennedy really did take a hit because Stevenson got absolutely clobbered in 1956, and theres evidence that Kennedy lost Ohio because of a swing in southern Ohio. Im also happy to accept the importance of evangelicals in the American Revolution and in the progressive movements of the early 19th century. One cant know for another 200 years or so whether its really a post-Christian time, but yes. I added that Americans are not in complete agreement about these things or [do not] view them as settled, that theyre constantly being fought over, constantly being contested, and that [it] is not such a bad thing that these are inherently conflict-ridden issues, and [that,] in fact, the American system thrives on conflict. The imams are paid by the state. The wars of religion in the 16th century in Europe fostered tolerance simply because of the inability of one religious party to dominate over the others, which meant that religion itself could no longer be a basis for public order and public culture. People could affiliate or not affiliate by choice precisely as their consciences dictated. Though not fully articulated until the 19 th century, proto-utilitarian positions can be discerned throughout the history . Humanism's defense of equal and universal human rights is an obvious example. Judaism is a religion which is at least as jam packed with propositional content as any other religion, meaning that it makes claims about the world, which may or may not be true, this vulnerability to the difference between truth and falsity being precisely what one means when one speaks of propositional content. I dont know I agree with the idea that the more you know, the more distrustful you will be. Again, I wont make a judgment about the legitimacy of the disaffection, although, when its on that scale, it has a legitimacy just by virtue of being as powerful as it is. But Tocquevilles visit to America convinced him that liberty and religion were not necessarily opposed to one another and their antagonism or attention was not necessarily a bad thing. Theres a tremendous and understandably human desire to line all our commitments up with one another and to have our philosophical and political and other convictions all in accord. The way I like to put this [is that] they are required to pass through a bicameral body politic, both religious and secular. To answer Mikes question, William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist and progressive on a very long series of issues. Is there a real difference between a 'secular' and 'religious' value. It proscribes public expression of religion to a very high degree. If theres any taint of that, I think hes really hurt himself or certainly not helped himself. The primary concern of the spiritual is redemption and obedience to Gods revealed will. Just as older religious traditions and commitments were found wanting in certain respects because of the interrogation they received at the hands of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment, so the Enlightenment project, as Alasdair MacIntyre and others like to say, is going through its own rolfing, and I think we will emerge at the other end of that with a different view of religion. (Laughter.) It wasnt played [directly]-it was played through operatives, but it was played, and it worked. COFFEY: A quick question taking the past as prologue. Thats why Martin Luther Kings finest rhetoric can, with equal plausibility, not only invoke the prophetic books of the Bible, of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, but also the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the words of the founders. Partly because I like historys losers, I wonder if you could talk about the Whigs. DAVID SHRIBMAN, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE: I wonder whether the indignity, Im insulted by this suggestion, might not work because hes otherwise so cool and so processed, it seems, that what would be wrong with him showing some anger about this, if its honest anger? Secular ethics - Wikipedia The primary concern of the secular is material welfare and comforts. Paradoxically, this competition has engendered habits of tolerance. I generally lecture there two or even three times a year. MCCLAY: Naomi knows that. [He is] still the best analyst, whose experience of France-again, the comparative dimension-brought home to him during his visit to America in the 1830s how remarkable it was that the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion co-existed and reinforced on another in the American context, in a manner that was completely contrary to the French historical example. The second question I have gets to the idea of specifics and how much he should talk about the particularities of the Mormon faith. This article was published in the New School's journal, The Culture of Encounter and the Global Agenda, Politicization of Religion in Global Perspective, Religion and the Crisis of Displaced Persons, Revitalizing Global Religious and Interfaith Networks, Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy, Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue. So its distinct from the philosophical understanding of secularism. Interestingly, George Romney also refused to use Mormon networks to fundraise. So I think theres a little bit more hope than-. There is an overweening quality to the legal strategies designed to denude the public square of all religious symbols. People from abroad look at the American government and think its always on the brink of collapse. But those were not things that had wide popularity, even among people who would see themselves as antagonistic to secularism in the strict sense. The second view, what I called the philosophical view or positive view, is much more assertive, more robust, more positive by affirming secularism as an ultimate and alternative faith that rightly supersedes the tragic blindnesses and, as [Christopher] Hitchens would have it, [the] poisons of the historical religions, particularly so far as activity in the public realm is concerned. But those sins are more functions of unreflectiveness than of conscious bias; [they are] reflections of a way of approaching a subject that naturally flows out of the milieu you operate in. One of the effects of Vatican II, which I think perhaps was unforeseen, is in emphasizing the horizontal dimension of worship, that it was not just a vertical transaction expressed through the sacraments, but an experience of community; this effect has made Roman Catholic worship more like what you would see in an evangelical church. Religion and Secularism: The American Experience And why when Stewart Burns wrote a biography of King, he was not being fanciful in calling [Kings] lifework a sacred mission to save America. We enshrine the separation of church and state, but at the same time we practice the mingling of religion and public life. She has a saying to the effect that, If you know only your own religion, you dont even know your own religion. Im sure she says it more elegantly than that, but thats the gist of it, and I was always dubious of this. MCCLAY: I wanted to go look at it, as I did a couple months ago when we started hearing people say, Romneys got to give a speech like Kennedy gave. I looked it up, and I dont know that Id ever read it before, and I was quite underwhelmed by it. If youve written a book, at some point during the sessions well be sure to mention everybodys book. Using this as an example of what was wrong with the operation of faith detached from reason, and what he called the de-hellenization of faith. She knows more about Christianity than most Christians. Thats why I like this bicameral image and, incidentally, this is why on issues like gay marriage, some of the most important battles are going to be fought in the churches. The imams are paid by the state. Christ makes this very plain: If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world therefore the world hateth you (John 15:19). Questions and Answers: Religious Discrimination in the Workplace It looks toward a non-established secular political order, one thats equally respectful of religionists and non-religionists alike. Its particularly striking, by the way, that issues of bioethics seem to have been what pushed Habermas to reconsider his views in the matter, and that, I think, is indicative of the difficulty-I wont say the impossibility-that a strictly secular understanding has in addressing effectively the problem of the instrumentalization of human life, which replaces transcendent notions of human dignity with what? These seem to be quite different actions, and the more militant elements of the religious right that youre talking about might favor what Moore was doing. 1615 L St. NW, Suite 800Washington, DC 20036USA (Laughter. They believe that the reduced numbers attending church . MCCLAY: As I recall, there is a line in the speech where he says something to the effect that, Ill be the sort of the president that no prelate will tell him what to do, so that gives it added irony. Christian Ethics - The Gospel Coalition The separation is a deduction from the idea that the civil magistrate has a power and legitimacy of its own; it doesnt need to be sanctified by the church. CROMARTIE: Ross debated him in Nantucket, and he has wonderful stories to tell us about that, right? I fear a lot of what hes said up to now is subtly saying, If you have a problem with me as a Mormon, youre a bigot. That just isnt going to make it, I think. I think something a little more mundane but of more concern to more people is the whole question of how health insurance is going to be provided to the great mass of Americans, and what kind of programmatic solution to that problem can be found. To ignore human need is to deny some of our Lords most clearly taught lessons. So [it] is very turgid prose, but its important. ANDREA STONE, USA TODAY: What about the early 20th century labor movement, which was more socialist in some areas? I think thats right, Michael, that he did not defuse it, but he defused it enough and then won his big Catholic landslide. This is one of the keys to understanding the relationship of religion and secularism in the United States. The single best analyst of all of this, [and] I wish I could come up with [a] name you hadnt heard before, but [it] is Alexis de Tocqueville. Secularism, as such, is a grave danger, and never has it been more so than today. But it was not an issue at all according to my students research, and I have no reason to disbelieve it. Tocqueville, of course, is known for producing a very memorable portrait of America as a middle-class society, in all the best and worst senses of that term, and a feverishly competitive, commercial, acquisitive, practical-minded, jealously egalitarian and, of course, restlessly mobile society. People could affiliate or not affiliate by choice precisely as their consciences dictated. I also think about godless Jews in the labor movement that was mentioned. McClay contends that the first understanding of secularism was at the heart of the founders vision and, that it, aided by those features of Christianity prevalent in America, have resulted in a unique if imperfect mingling of religion and government in American public life. Deontology's Foil: Consequentialism 2. (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. One might cite, not only as Stephen did, the civil-rights movement, certainly the movement for the abolition of slavery, which was an even more religious movement, or womens suffrage, or even the American Revolution itself are examples of this. I think thats absolutely wrong. the authority of secular moral values. The case is made on the basis That was their dream: to bring back the simplicity and mutuality of the church of Christs time and strip it away of all of the traditional encumbrances and barnacles that [had] accumulated over the centuries and get back to the simplicity and charisma and equality among members that was characteristic of the Apostolic church as you see it described in the Acts of the Apostles. So this is an achievement, even if it was not always [as] self-conscious [an] achievement as Americans would like to think; and its one I think we should understand better than we do. We see that, of course, manifested in all kinds of issues where views that are considered tolerant on abortion or stem-cell research or you name it have a religious inspiration in the eyes of many of these people. The Weaknesses of Deontological Theories 5. They dont understand, and many of us dont understand, that this is, in fact, the way its supposed to work. But in its fundamentals, and I use that word in quotes, it should be. Ultimately, they are grounded in certain characteristic features of Christianity itself, which is one of the reasons why, when we talk about religion as if all and any religions can impart the same results, I think were misleading ourselves. SCHRIBMAN: He can talk about the American tradition of tolerance and equal opportunity, which is consistent with his message, right? Furthermore, the First Amendment, which prohibits the establishment of a religion and protects the free exercise of religion, was not intended to secularize the national government, but instead to protect against sectarian conflict and exclusiveness and the power grab by some national church.
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